Small plane crashes into Pennsylvania retirement community parking lot

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By Brad Brooks

(Reuters) -A small plane with five people aboard crashed on Sunday into the parking lot of a retirement community in southern Pennsylvania, authorities said.

The five people aboard the plane survived the crash near the Lancaster, Pennsylvania, airport and were transported to local hospitals, Manheim Township fire chief Scott Little said at a press conference. He did not have details on the condition of the pilot and passengers.

Little said that no one on the ground was injured and that the plane did not strike any buildings when it crashed shortly after taking off. At least a dozen cars in the parking lot of the Brethren Village retirement community were damaged by the plane.

Images shown on local TV stations showed the plane in flames atop parked vehicles with at least three cars on fire.

Authorities said they did not yet know why the plane crashed.

National Transportation Safety Board investigators are probing several crashes in recent weeks: the midair collision of a passenger jet and U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter in Washington, D.C., in January that killed 67 people, a medical jet crash in Philadelphia that killed seven people in January and a plane crash in Alaska that killed 10 people in February.

(Reporting by Brad Brooks in Colorado; Editing by Ross Colvin and Lisa Shumaker)